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The Magellanic Stream (MS), a tail of diffuse gas formed from tidal and ram pressure interactions between the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC and LMC) and the Halo of the Milky Way, is primarily composed of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI). The deficiency of dust and the diffuse nature of the present gas make molecular formation rare and difficult, but if present, could lead to regions potentially suitable for star formation, thereby allowing us to probe conditions of star formation similar to those at high redshifts. We search for $\text{HCO}^{+}$, HCN, HNC, and C$_2$H using the highest sensitivity observations of molecular absorption data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) to trace these regions, comparing with HI archival data from the Galactic Arecibo L-Band Feed Array (GALFA) HI Survey and the Galactic All Sky Survey (GASS) to compare these environments in the MS to the HI column density threshold for molecular formation in the Milky Way. We also compare the line of sight locations with confirmed locations of stars, molecular hydrogen, and OI detections, though at higher sensitivities than the observations presented here.
We find no detections to a 3$\sigma$ significance, despite four sightlines having column densities surpassing the threshold for molecular formation in the diffuse regions of the Milky Way. Here we present our calculations for the upper limits of the column densities of each of these molecular absorption lines, ranging from $3 \times 10^{10}$ to $1 \times 10^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$. The non-detection of $\text{HCO}^{+}$ suggests that at least one of the following is true: (i) $X_{\text{HCO}^{+}{}, \mathrm{MS}}$ is significantly lower than the Milky Way value; (ii) that the widespread diffuse molecular gas observed by Rybarczyk (2022b, ApJ, 928, 79) in the Milky Way’s diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) does not have a direct analogue in the MS; (iii) the HI-to-$\text{H}_{2}$ transition occurs in the MS at a higher surface density in the MS than in the LMC or SMC; or (iv) molecular gas exists in the MS, but only in small, dense clumps.
Although behavioral mechanisms in the association among depression, anxiety, and cancer are plausible, few studies have empirically studied mediation by health behaviors. We aimed to examine the mediating role of several health behaviors in the associations among depression, anxiety, and the incidence of various cancer types (overall, breast, prostate, lung, colorectal, smoking-related, and alcohol-related cancers).
Methods
Two-stage individual participant data meta-analyses were performed based on 18 cohorts within the Psychosocial Factors and Cancer Incidence consortium that had a measure of depression or anxiety (N = 319 613, cancer incidence = 25 803). Health behaviors included smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol use, body mass index (BMI), sedentary behavior, and sleep duration and quality. In stage one, path-specific regression estimates were obtained in each cohort. In stage two, cohort-specific estimates were pooled using random-effects multivariate meta-analysis, and natural indirect effects (i.e. mediating effects) were calculated as hazard ratios (HRs).
Results
Smoking (HRs range 1.04–1.10) and physical inactivity (HRs range 1.01–1.02) significantly mediated the associations among depression, anxiety, and lung cancer. Smoking was also a mediator for smoking-related cancers (HRs range 1.03–1.06). There was mediation by health behaviors, especially smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol use, and a higher BMI, in the associations among depression, anxiety, and overall cancer or other types of cancer, but effects were small (HRs generally below 1.01).
Conclusions
Smoking constitutes a mediating pathway linking depression and anxiety to lung cancer and smoking-related cancers. Our findings underline the importance of smoking cessation interventions for persons with depression or anxiety.
In situ elemental imaging of planetary surface regolith at a spatial resolution of 100s to 1000s of microns can provide evidence of the provenance of rocks or sediments and their habitability, and can identify post-depositional diagenetic alteration affecting preservation. We use high-resolution elemental maps and XRF spectra from MapX, a flight prototype in situ X-ray imaging instrument, to demonstrate this technology in rock types relevant to astrobiology. Examples are given for various petrologies and depositional/diagenetic environments, including ultramafic/mafic rocks, serpentinites, hydrothermal carbonates, evaporites, stromatolitic cherts and diagenetic concretions.
The aim of this study is to determine to what extent the addition of chitinase to black soldier fly (BSF) larval meal enriched or not with long-chain PUFA (LC-PUFA) could improve growth, protein digestion processes and gut microbial composition in Nile tilapia. Two different types of BSF meal were produced, in which larvae were reared on substrates formulated with vegetable culture substrate (VGS) or marine fish offal substrate (FOS). The BSF raised on VGS was enriched in α-linolenic acid (ALA), while that raised on FOS was enriched in ALA + EPA + DHA. Six BSF-based diets, enriched or not with chitinase, were formulated and compared with a control diet based on fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO). Two doses (D) of chitinase from Aspergillus niger (2 g and 5 g/kg feed) were added to the BSF larval diets (VGD0 and FOD0) to obtain four additional diets: VGD2, VGD5, FOD2 and FOD5. After 53 d of feeding, results showed that the BSF/FOS-based diets induced feed utilisation, protein efficiency and digestibility, as well as growth comparable to the FMFO control diet, but better than the BSF/VGS-based diets. The supplementation of chitinase to BSF/FOS increased in fish intestine the relative abundance of beneficial microbiota such as those of the Bacillaceae family. The results showed that LC-PUFA-enriched BSF meal associated with chitinase could be used as an effective alternative to fishmeal in order to improve protein digestion processes, beneficial microbiota and ultimately fish growth rate.
A first integrative survey of the genus Usnea in the southern Philippines, taking into account morphological, anatomical, chemical and molecular characters, resulted in the recognition of 20 taxa, including three species new to science: Usnea angulata Ach., U. baileyi (Stirt.) Zahlbr., U. bismolliuscula Zahlbr., U. brasiliensis (Zahlbr.) Motyka, U. confusa Asah., U. croceorubescens Stirt., U. dasaea Stirt., U. himalayana C. Bab., U. krogiana P. Clerc, U. longissima Ach., U. nidifica Taylor, U. norsticornuta A. Gerlach & P. Clerc sp. nov. (characterized by a moderately thick cortex and by the presence of norstictic acid), U. paleograndisora A. Gerlach & P. Clerc sp. nov. (characterized by an orange subcortical pigmentation in the medulla, with enlarging soralia and a moderately thick and shiny cortex), U. pectinata Taylor, U. pygmoidea (Asahina) Y. Ohmura, U. rubicunda Stirt., U. rubrotincta (Stirt.) Zahlbr., U. spinulifera (Vain.) Motyka, U. subscabrosa Motyka and U. yoshihitoi P. Clerc & A. Gerlach sp. nov. (characterized by a lax medulla with non-conglutinated hyphae). Usnea krogiana is a new record for Asia; Usnea brasiliensis, Usnea confusa and U. croceorubescens are new records for the Philippines. This is the first phylogenetic study to include DNA sequences of Usnea from the Philippines. Molecular data from the ITS rDNA (76 newly generated sequences) are presented for most taxa except for U. himalayana, U. longissima and U. subscabrosa. At least six further taxa remain unidentified, awaiting the collection of additional specimens.
Non-marine molluscs stand out as the major animal group under the most severe threat. Among the 8664 mollusc species evaluated for the IUCN Red List (version 2019-1), 300 are considered Extinct out of a total 872 listed Extinct species. However, only ~10% of molluscs have been evaluated and other assessments of the number of extinct species are much higher, 3000 to over 5000, almost exclusively non-marine species. As for most other groups, threats faced by non-marine molluscs are habitat loss, probably the most important, but also impacts of introduced species, exploitation, generally of less concern, and climate change, likely to have serious effects into the future. Oceanic island species, often narrowly endemic, are especially threatened and constitute a high proportion of recorded extinctions. Anthropogenic activities have caused non-marine mollusc extinctions since prehistory, but threats have increased greatly over the last few centuries and will probably continue to increase. Most mollusc species for which a population trend has been evaluated by IUCN are stable or declining; those few that are increasing are primarily introduced and invasive. Most threatened are oceanic island snails, North American and other freshwater bivalves, and the diverse and highly endemic micro-snails of Southeast Asian limestone outcrops.
The mid-Maastrichtian carbon isotope event (MME), dated at ∼69 Ma, reflects a perturbation of the global carbon cycle that, in part, correlates with the enigmatic global extinction of ‘true’ (i.e., non-tegulated) inoceramid bivalves. The mechanisms of this extinction event are still debated.
While both the inoceramid extirpation and MME have been recorded in a variety of deep-sea sites, little is known about their expression in epicontinental chalk seas. In order to study the shallow-marine signature of the MME in this epicontinental shelf sea, we have generated quantitative foraminiferal assemblage data for two quarries (Hallembaye, NE Belgium; ENCI, SE Netherlands) in the Maastrichtian type area, complemented by a species-specific benthic δ13C record. In contrast to deep-sea records, no significant changes in benthic foraminiferal assemblages and benthic foraminiferal accumulation rates are observed across the MME in the type-Maastrichtian area. At the Hallembaye quarry, the otherwise rare endobenthic species Cuneus trigona reaches a transient peak abundance of 33.3% at the onset of the MME, likely caused by a local transient change in organic matter flux to the seafloor. Nevertheless, high and near-constant species evenness shows that neither oxygen nor organic matter flux was limited across the extinction level or during the MME. Benthic foraminiferal data from the uppermost part of the studied section, above the MME, indicate a significant increase in food supply to the seafloor. Decreased amounts of terrigenous elements across this interval document a lesser riverine or aeolian influx, which means that the increased benthic productivity is linked to a different origin. Potentially, the continuous precipitation of chalk under nutrient-poor conditions in the Late Cretaceous chalk sea was enabled by efficient nutrient recycling in the water column. In shallower depositional settings, nutrient recycling took place closer to the seafloor, which allowed more organic matter to reach the bottom. These results provide insights in the importance of nutrient cycling for biological productivity in the NW-European chalk sea.
Exposure to infected healthcare workers (HCWs) is a source of hospital-acquired (HA) influenza. We estimated the risk of HA influenza for hospitalized patients by rate of influenza vaccine coverage (IVC) of HCWs.
Methods:
A case–case negative control study nested in a prospective cohort was conducted in 2 French university hospitals during 2 influenza seasons. Each inpatient with influenza-like illness (ILI) provided a nasal swab sample that was systematically analyzed for influenza virus by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing. An HA influenza case was a patient with a virological confirmation of influenza with onset of symptoms ≥72 hours after admission to the ward. The IVC rate of HCWs in each participating ward was calculated from the data provided by the occupational health departments. A mixed-effect logistic regression was performed with adjustments on patient sex, age, the presence of a potential source of influenza on the ward in the 5 days prior to the start of the ILI, type of ward and influenza season.
Results:
The overall HA influenza attack rate was 1.9 per 1,000 hospitalized patients. In total, 24 confirmed HA influenza cases and 141 controls were included. The crude odds ratio (OR) of HA influenza decreased from 0.52 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.21–1.29) to 0.14 (95% CI, 0.03–0.63) when the IVC of HCWs increased from 20% to 40%. After adjustment, IVC ≥40% was associated with a risk reduction of HA influenza (aOR, 0.07; 95% CI, 0.01–0.78).
Conclusions:
Considering a limited sample size, influenza vaccination of HCWs is highly suggestive of HA flu prevention among hospitalized patients.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), originally intended to cover 12 Asia-Pacific countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam), was arguably the largest and most economically significant regional trade agreement (RTA) ever concluded. Together, the original TPP signatories accounted for about 26% of world trade and 36% of world GDP. In early 2017, the United States withdrew from the TPP on the direction of the then-newly elected US President, Donald J. Trump, casting the agreement’s future into uncertainty.
Certain neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS), namely apathy, depression, and anxiety demonstrated great value in predicting dementia progression, representing eventually an opportunity window for timely diagnosis and treatment. However, sensitive and objective markers of these symptoms are still missing. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the association between automatically extracted speech features and NPS in patients with mild neurocognitive disorders.
Methods
Speech of 141 patients aged 65 or older with neurocognitive disorder was recorded while performing two short narrative speech tasks. NPS were assessed by the neuropsychiatric inventory. Paralinguistic markers relating to prosodic, formant, source, and temporal qualities of speech were automatically extracted, correlated with NPS. Machine learning experiments were carried out to validate the diagnostic power of extracted markers.
Results
Different speech variables are associated with specific NPS; apathy correlates with temporal aspects, and anxiety with voice quality—and this was mostly consistent between male and female after correction for cognitive impairment. Machine learning regressors are able to extract information from speech features and perform above baseline in predicting anxiety, apathy, and depression scores.
Conclusions
Different NPS seem to be characterized by distinct speech features, which are easily extractable automatically from short vocal tasks. These findings support the use of speech analysis for detecting subtypes of NPS in patients with cognitive impairment. This could have great implications for the design of future clinical trials as this cost-effective method could allow more continuous and even remote monitoring of symptoms.
Competition agency guidelines, policy statements and related advocacy activities are an important vehicle for policy expression across the full spectrum of anti-competitive practices and for the guidance of firms in determining their market conduct. They are also, often, a revealing window into the thinking of agency officials and professional staff regarding the problems they are grappling with, thus providing an empirical foundation for mapping the trends and evolution of such policy thinking across diverse jurisdictions and over time. An early, influential example of such guidelines was the Merger Guidelines adopted by the US Department of Justice in 1968,1 which embodied and set out clearly the structure-conduct-performance paradigm of industrial organization and competition policy analysis that was prevalent at the time.
Background: Sink drains can act as breeding grounds for multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria, leading to outbreaks. Drains provide a protected humid environment where nutrient-rich substances are available. Recent and growing installation of water and energy conservation devices have led to increased frequency of drain blockage due to biofilm accumulation. Ineffective drainage may lead to backflow and accumulation of water in the sink during use, increasing the risk of contaminated aerosols formation or direct contamination of surrounding material and equipment. Cleaning and disinfection procedures of sink drains need to be improved to prevent amplification and dispersion of MDR bacteria. The objective of this study was to investigate alternatives to reduce the biofilm and risk of contamination through aerosols. Methods: Sink drains from patient rooms were randomly selected in the neonatal intensive care unit of a 450-bed pediatric hospital. We tested 4 approaches: (1) new drain; (2) self-disinfecting heating-vibration drain; (3) chemical disinfection with 20 ppm chlorine for 30 minutes; and (4) thermal disinfection with > 90°C water for 30 minutes. A special device was used during disinfection to increase the disinfectant contact time with the biofilm. Treatments were conducted weekly, with prior sampling of drain water. Other drains were also sampled weekly, including a control drain with no intervention. Bacterial loads were evaluated using flow cytometry and heterotrophic plate counts. The drains were made of stainless steel, a heat-conductive material. Results: Preliminary results show that chlorine disinfection had a small impact (<1 log) on culturable bacteria at 48 hours after disinfection but not after a week or repeated weekly disinfection. Thermal disinfection using boiling water is promising, showing an important decrease of 4 log in culturable cells after 48 hours and a concentration still 100× lower 1 week after the disinfection. Repeated weekly thermal disinfection maintained lower culturable levels in the drain. No culturable cells were detected in water from the self-disinfecting drain 2 months after installation, whereas the new drain became fully colonized to concentrations similar to those of drains prior to interventions during the same period. Conclusions: Thermal disinfection of drains is a promising alternative to chlorine. This solution is interesting because it is nontoxic and easy to perform, requiring a small volume of hot water. The rapid recolonization of the new drain suggests that replacing contaminated drains is not a sustainable solution and would need to be paired with a thermal disinfection program to maintain low culturable cells.
Ms. L is having a regular ongoing follow-up with a psychiatrist in private practice for a history of bipolar disorder (BP). She reported a first major depressive episode at the age of 17 as well as one manic episode several years later. She had a last depressive episode 10 years ago and is currently stabilized under antipsychotic medication. Before being prescribed antipsychotics, she was under sodium valproate medication. She also reported a suicide attempt at the age of 11. In addition to her BP, she reported a dysthyroidia treated with L-thyroxine.
Liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy is a technique for simultaneous imaging of the structure and dynamics of specimens in a liquid environment. The conventional sample geometry consists of a liquid layer tightly sandwiched between two Si3N4 windows with a nominal spacing on the order of 0.5 μm. We describe a variation of the conventional approach, wherein the Si3N4 windows are separated by a 10-μm-thick spacer, thus providing room for gas flow inside the liquid specimen enclosure. Adjusting the pressure and flow speed of humid air inside this environmental liquid cell (ELC) creates a stable liquid layer of controllable thickness on the bottom window, thus facilitating high-resolution observations of low mass-thickness contrast objects at low electron doses. We demonstrate controllable liquid thicknesses in the range 160 ± 34 to 340 ± 71 nm resulting in corresponding edge resolutions of 0.8 ± 0.06 to 1.7 ± 0.8 nm as measured for immersed gold nanoparticles. Liquid layer thickness 40 ± 8 nm allowed imaging of low-contrast polystyrene particles. Hydration effects in the ELC have been studied using poly-N-isopropylacrylamide nanogels with a silica core. Therefore, ELC can be a suitable tool for in situ investigations of liquid specimens.
Background: Nosocomial infections cause 4%–56% mortality in newborns. Several epidemiological studies have shown that transmission of opportunistic pathogens from the sink to the patient, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, and Serratia marcescens are associated with nosocomial infections in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). In this project, we aimed to develop fast, accurate, and high-throughput multilocus sequence typing assays (HiMLST-Illumina) to detect opportunistic pathogens to assess their distribution in the sink environment of NICUs and their transfer to patients. Methods: Genome sequences of P. aeruginosa (n = 45), S. maltophilia (n = 23) and S. marcescens (n = 34) strains were retrieved from public genome databases to build their pangenomes, using the open-source PGAdb-builder server. The core genome was identified for each opportunistic pathogen and was searched for genes displaying the highest polymorphism. The minimal number of loci to include in a HiMLST-Illumina assay was determined by comparing topology of phylogenetic trees of concatenated loci based on genome similarity, computed as the average nucleotide identity (ANI) score. The primers used for HiMLST-Illumina schemes were designed in silico on a conserved domain and were tested on reference strains of each species. Results: Bioinformatics analyses showed that 3–4 loci (<300 base pairs per locus) distinguished strains with the same performances than ANI scores. The assays were tested using opportunistic pathogen isolates and environmental DNA originating from NICU sinks. The HiMLST-Illumina analysis of environmental DNA revealed the presence of at least 1 of the 3 studied opportunistic pathogens in 50% of sampled drains (n = 20). In a previous sampling, P. aeruginosa was isolated on selective culture media before and 48 hours after disinfection of a sink drain with chlorine. S. marcescens was also isolated from another sink 2 weeks after disinfection. Identification of the isolates was confirmed by HiMLST-Illumina analyses and will be typed to compare with clinical isolates. Conclusions: Initial in silico tests predict a high discriminating power of the HiMLST-Illumina method, suggesting that it would be possible to quickly identify strains of interest in a large number of samples. The power of this method is also in the possibility for molecular typing without a need for cultivation. Preliminary results suggest that sinks are readily colonized by opportunistic pathogens. This HiMLST-Illumina scheme will be applied in a 2-year intensive survey of NICUs in 3 hospitals in Montreal to evaluate the performance of new sink designs in limiting bioaerosol production and transmission of opportunistic pathogens to patients.
In this note, we study the hyperbolic stochastic damped sine-Gordon equation (SdSG), with a parameter β2 > 0, and its associated Gibbs dynamics on the two-dimensional torus. After introducing a suitable renormalization, we first construct the Gibbs measure in the range 0 < β2 < 4π via the variational approach due to Barashkov-Gubinelli (2018). We then prove almost sure global well-posedness and invariance of the Gibbs measure under the hyperbolic SdSG dynamics in the range 0 < β2 < 2π. Our construction of the Gibbs measure also yields almost sure global well-posedness and invariance of the Gibbs measure for the parabolic sine-Gordon model in the range 0 < β2 < 4π.